Philip Morris Inc.

Frederick Manufacturing Company

Roy E VanDerLinden

Barry Scott Smith

John H Francis

Michael J Mullins

Gary E Grollimund

Herbert Carrington Longest, Jr

An apparatus and process for the inspection, conveying, and optionally temporary storage of uniform packaged goods is described. The apparatus includes a singulating device which takes dual stacked goods and reduces the dual stack to a single line of goods, inspects the goods, returns the goods to a dual stack, and transports them to a cartoner. A preferred embodiment contains a temporary buffer for storage of the goods to compensate for manufacturing speed changes, supply/demand fluctuations, or excessive rejects.

Vision inspection system for double stacked packs

Improved systems for optical inspection are provided. The improved systems use modified camera boxes to provide increased, and more uniform, illumination of the objects being inspected through the use of illuminator windows. The lens arrangement of the improved camera boxes is contained within a self-contained, sealed housing that is separate from the camera to prevent particle contamination of the lens arrangement and provide improved flexibility during installation of the camera boxes on the inspection systems. The self-contained housing also provides for a reduction in the space required for the camera boxes. The light receiver of the housing is provided with the capability for preventing particle contamination of the receiver itself.

Systems for optical inspection

Conical drives for changing the speed of an output shaft relative to an input shaft include a conical coupling between the output shaft and a conical driving member within the drive. The output and input shafts are aligned with a first axis and the conical driving member rolls around the first axis without slipping while rotating about a second axis disposed obliquely with respect to and intersecting the first axis at a coincidence point. The apexes of the conical coupling and the conical driving member are coincident with the coincidence point. The conical coupling is utilized with both single and multispeed drives.

Conical drive

A multi-speed drive has input and output shafts aligned on a first axis and connected to one another by a cone drive which has a plurality of conical surfaces sloped at various angles to form a 'composite' cone. The composite cone is connected to the input shaft by a crank and rotates about a second axis which is oblique to, but intersects, the first axis at a point of intersection which is also a point of coincidence of the apexes of the conical surfaces. The composite cone rolls on one of a plurality of annular, conical surfaces, each of which is aligned with one of the conical surfaces on the cone. In accordance with the illustrated embodiment, all of the annular surfaces are free to rotate with respect to the composite cone, with the exception of the single annular surface that the composite cone rolls upon. This surface may be selected by stopping its rotation with a braking device, such as a pin or a prony brake. In the alternative, the conical annular surfaces may be slid axially in and out of engagement with their respective annular surfaces on the composite cone to select the desired output speed. A constant velocity joint connects the composite cone to the output shaft so as to transmit the rotation of the composite cone to the output shaft. By selecting a single angle (.gamma.) between the first and second axis, and by selecting appropriate angles (.alpha.) for the conical surfaces, various output speeds and torques may be applied to the output shaft for a single input speed according to the ratio (R) wherein: ##EQU1## The aforedescribed multi-speed drive provides positive speed reductions and negative speed reductions. In addition, it provides 'overdrive', direct drive, 'park ' and neutral modes of operation.

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Frederick, MD, United States of America

Roy E VanDerLinden